1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a marketing system, an information communications system and a recording medium thereof, in which terminal equipment of a client refers to (retrieves) product information of a vendor through a wide area network (WAN) such as the Internet, or through radio communications facilities like satellite broadcasting, TV broadcasting, etc., and the client transmits order information including information about payment to the vendor through a communications system other than the WAN.
2. Description of Related Art
As one of such conventional systems, a system is known, in which terminal equipment of a client retrieves product information from an information server connected to the Internet, and displays the product information. The software for displaying the product information consisting of a combination of images and characters is called a browser on the World Wide Web, and Netscape produced by Netscape Communications Corporation is known as one of them, for example. The client decides products to buy watching the product information displayed on the terminal equipment. Then, the client orders the products from the vendor. The order is placed by phone, facsimile or WWW browser.
The order by phone is carried out through talking between the client and a clerk, in which case, the clerk must manually operate a computer to enter and register order information such as product names, client's name and address, and a method of payment. Thus, this method cannot respond to orders of a large number of clients.
In view of this, a marketing system is proposed in which terminal equipment of a vendor or a communication system of a commercial provider is used as information server and order accepting equipment at the same time, and terminal equipment of a client receives product information therefrom, and transmits order information thereto as needed. In this case, however, since the order information includes the identification (ID) number of a credit card when the client wishes to complete payment by the credit card, such important information is transmitted through the Internet. Thus, the ID number of the credit card is exposed to risks of theft and abuse. As a result, this method has a problem with security.
One of the most popular information communications method in the case where the product information is provided through the Internet is to send the order information from a client to a vendor individually by facsimile. Since this obviates talking between the client and the clerk, it can respond to a large number of orders. The problem still remains, however, of inputting the order information into the computer by manual operation.